The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Jamie “I love you” at every turn and putting “ILY” at the end of my e-mails. I also started hugging Jamie more—as well as other people in my life. Hugging relieves stress, boosts feelings of closeness, and even squelches pain. In one study, people assigned to give five hugs each day for a month, aiming to hug as many different people as they could, became happier.
    Some things I was already doing right. Because I didn’t want every one of my e-mails to Jamie to contain some irksome question or reminder, I’d gotten into the habit of sending him enjoyable messages, with interesting news or funny stories about the girls.
    One day when I walked by Jamie’s office building in midtown on my way to a meeting, I stopped to call him on my cell phone.
    “Are you at your desk?” I asked.
    “Yes, why?”
    “Look down at the steps of St. Bartholomew’s.” The church was right across the street from Jamie’s office. “Do you see me waving to you?”
    “Yes, look, there you are! I’m waving back.”
    Taking the time to give that silly, affectionate wave filled me with good feelings that lasted for hours.
    These were small gestures, but they made a surprisingly big shift in the tone of our interactions. I had an opportunity to make a larger gesture, too, because my mother-in-law, Judy, had a significant birthday coming up.
    Parents and in-laws play a big part in our lives. My parents, Karen and Jack Craft, live in Kansas City, where I grew up, but one or both ofmy parents visit every few months, and we go to Kansas City to stay with them at least twice a year. These visits are of the intense, what-should-we-all-do-today? variety. Jamie’s parents live just around the corner. Literally. There’s one lone skinny town house between their apartment building and our apartment building. When we’re walking around the neighborhood, we often see them heading toward us, on their way to get coffee or to stop by the market—Judy with her silver hair and beautiful scarves, Bob with his stiff gait and wool cap.
    Fortunately for our marriage, Jamie and I agree on the importance of our relationships with our two sets of parents, so it was natural for me to be thinking about Judy’s birthday. If we’d asked Judy how she’d like to celebrate, she would have said she didn’t care. However, if you want to know how people would like to be treated, it’s more helpful to look at how they themselves act than what they say. Judy is one of the most reliable people I’ve ever met; she never forgets an obligation, fails to do something she says she’ll do, or misses an important date. And though she insists that exchanging birthday or holiday gifts isn’t important to her, no one gives more thoughtful and beautifully wrapped presents. She even gives us wedding-anniversary presents that track the traditional theme for each year: for our fourth, “fruits and flowers” anniversary, she gave us a beautiful quilt with a fruits and flowers design; for our tenth, “tin/aluminum” anniversary, she gave us ten boxes of aluminum foil.
    Jamie, his father, and his brother, Phil, aren’t good at planning birthday celebrations. In the past, I would have made a few reminder comments as Judy’s birthday loomed, nagged at Jamie to make plans, then had a smug I-told-you-so attitude when the birthday wasn’t celebrated properly. My happiness project work hadn’t all been in vain, however, and I saw the solution to the problem: I would take charge.
    I knew the kind of party Judy would like. She definitely wouldn’t want a surprise party, and she’d prefer a family party at home. She valued thoughtfulness far more than lavishness, so homemade gifts that showed forethought would mean more to her than anything store-bought, andshe’d like a home-cooked meal more than dinner in a fancy restaurant. Fortunately, my brother-in-law, Phil, and his wife, Lauren, are gifted chefs who run a catering company, so a meal could be both home-cooked and fancy.
    A vision came to me as if in a dream; then I needed authority to execute it.
    I called my father-in-law at the office. “Hi, Bob. I’m calling to talk about plans for Judy’s birthday.”
    “That’s a little far off, don’t you think?”
    “Not really, not if we want to plan something special. And I think we should.”
    Pause.
    “Well,” he said slowly, “I’d been thinking—”
    “Because I have an idea, if you’d like to hear what I think might be fun.”
    “Oh yes,” he said